Case packers for bottles in the past have been primarily designed to handle glass bottles which, although becoming lighter in weight, have traditionally been relatively heavy when compared to the recently produced plastic bottles such as those used for packaging detergents and other household liquid products. In order to handle the relatively heavy glass bottles, the case-packing equipment usually required heavy, expensive machine elements. Furthermore, when handling glass, it has been found necessary to pack the glass in cartons which have dividers spanning the space within the carton, to divide and separate the glass containers one from another due to their fragile nature. These dividers and cartons normally are provided by the glass manufacturer, inasmuch as it is necessary for the glass manufacturer to ship the empty bottles to the user. The user then fills the bottles with its product and reships the filled bottles in the same cartons with dividers which were provided by the glass manufacturer.
When dealing with plastic bottles, again the bottle manufacturer usually supplies the bottles to the user in cartons typically made of corrugated board. But in the case of plastic bottles, depending on the product being bottled, it may or may not require dividers to be present within the carton to separate the bottles one from the other.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide an automatic case-packing system in which plastic bottles are moved in a single line to an assembly area where the bottles are assembled into a carton-filling array, then inserted within the carton and the carton then being moved away from the assembly area. Here again, the cartons are brought to the assembly area also in a generally automatic fashion without requiring handling by a large number of people.
It is a further object of this invention to provide a case-packing method for plastic bottles, which can be carried out with relatively inexpensive equipment compared to the equipment for handling heavier glass containers.
Other and further objects will be apparent from the following description.